Backblast: November 23rd, 2025
AO: The Pump Station – Hood Park – Perrysburg, OH
PAX:
Photon – Q
Bourbon
Doubtfire
Flat Rate
Geppetto
Jersey
Mamba
Shepherd
Sherpa
Spaulding
Ukulele
Workout: The Norwegian 4×4
FNG’s: N/A
Mission and Principles:
F3: Fitness, Fellowship, Faith
Mission: To plant, grow and serve small workout groups for men for the invigoration of male community leadership.
The core principles of F3 are that it is always:
1. Free of charge
2. Open to all men
3. Held outdoors, rain or shine, heat or cold
4. Led by men who participate in the workout in a rotating fashion, with no training or certification necessary. You versus you. Modify or stop an exercise if you need to. The most important thing is that nobody gets hurt.
5. Ends with a Circle of Trust
Credo: Leave no man behind but leave no man where you find him
Warm-up: In Cadence
SSH: 44
Chain Breakers: 16
Abe Vigodas: 16
The “Thang”:
We performed the standard Norwegian 4×4, which consisted of four rounds of 4 minutes on (90% effort), 3 minutes off. The idea is to maintain a consistently elevated heartrate for the four 4-minute work portions and allowing the heart rate to drop significantly during the 3-minute rest periods…all in an effort to improve VO2 Max.
4 min. On: AMRAP burpees for the full 4 minutes, trying to maintain a consistent pacing.
3 min. Off: Slow mosey around the path from stairs to the street.
Finished with 44 BBSUs in cadence.
Ended with:
Count-O-Rama: 11
Name-O-Rama
The Six – Shepherd
LDP3
Ball of Man
Spreadsheets from the Gloom: 30F and dry. Have had this one in mind for a few months now since originally reading about it. As an engineer and general fan of efficiency, I was intrigued by the idea of “the most efficient” workout for improving VO2 max. And while the preferred methods of exercise for this aren’t ideal for a large group of men working out outdoors, burpees seemed like a reasonable method for achieving the goal. And burpees are elite anyway, so a win-win.
This one was tough. 4 minute burpee AMRAP sucks…the first time. And it only gets worse each successive round as muscles fatigue and heart-rate plateaus. Maintaining the first round’s pacing proved impossible, and I personally dropped about 3 reps every round. Either the slow mosey during the active rest periods wasn’t nearly slow enough, or my overall pacing was poor. But it was a great workout nonetheless. Right round 200 burpees in the 16 minutes of active work.
As always, it was a pleasure to lead. Wouldn’t be surprised if this saw the light of day again sometime.
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